The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays

It would seem churlish to give this 4 stars, even though the essays rather trail off toward the end. A masterpiece of thought from one of the century's greatest writers, but whose cultural context and intellect are slowly - I believe - damning him to that particular obscurity known as the literary giant: much applauded, little read. What will people know of Auden by the time I am an old man? I often wonder.

Auden is that rare bird who is a first-rate poet and a first-rate critic. Anything he turned his hand to was of the first-rate. He had Johnsonian common sense and the 'fancy' of the most romantic of the Romantics. It is the rarest pleasure to pick up anything by Auden. He could make the most unprepossessing cur look like a showdog.

A beloved book. Certain of these essays I have read many times and have no doubt I will read many more. "The Guilty Vicarage" (detective fiction), "The I Without a Self" (Kafka), "The Joker in the Pack" ("Othello", actually, Iago), "Music In Shakespeare" (self evident). However, however... Auden always fancied himself an epigrammatist, and he did, on occasion, come up with some good ones. Several sections of this book are merely collections of what I'm sure he thought were some choice specimens -- the chapters called "Reading", "Writing", "Hic et Ille." He rarely, to my mind, achieved the kind of provocative, double-edged quality of the best practitioners of this particular art, though. Many of his quips (they are really not much more show more than that) are just plain wrong and not a few are simply silly. I refuse to dwell on this, though, and will return once again to read Auden's forever fresh observations of the theme of master & servant in "Balaam and His Ass." show less

In the early 1950s Auden began planning a prose volume that would bring together some of his published essays, lectures, and reviews, together with newly-written notes and aphorisms. In 1956 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and The Dyer's Hand appeared in 1962, combining earlier material with revised versions of many of his Oxford lectures: The result is one of Auden's most original works, his only book of prose devised as a single cohesive work about disparate subjects, and containing - as he remarked at the time - 'all the autobiography I am willing to make public'.

Set of essays by poet Auden, some on literary criticism, others on politics, poetry, music and other topics.

Brilliant prose stylist whose insights were ever so enlightening. A brilliant poet!

The man may have had his problems, but he was a brilliant poet.